Bazooka-Strapped Musicians Celebrate the Violence of Mexico’s Drug War

For years now, Mexican and Mexican-American singers have been rising to fame based on music that celebrates the violent lifestyle associated with the drug war south of the border. They belt out songs about drugs and guns and are often compared to rappers in the U.S. for the way they sensationalize violence. Only the songs aren’t about themselves, they’re about actual drug lords.

The songs are called narcocorridos, and filmmaker Shaul Schwarz recently spent two years following Edgar Quintero, a singer with the group BuKnas de Culiacan and a rising star of the genre. Schwarz’s film, Narco Cultura, opens in New York this Friday.

“While death statistics have been documented ad nauseam, far less has been said about the broader social reality created by the drug trade,” says Schwarz.

To write their songs, which are often celebrations of one person or one cartel, artists like Quintero will talk to the narco-traffickers on the phone and ask them things like what kinds of guns they use, what kind of acts they’ve committed, then pen the songs and have the narcos sign off on the final version. Sometimes there’s a big geographical disconnect between singer and content — Quintero actually lives in Los Angeles, has a family and only recently performed for the first time in Juarez.

The corridos are wildly popular on both sides of the border. Like hip-hop in the U.S., the songs have found traction amongst young people in Mexico who aren’t necessarily involved with the drug war but idealize the power and opportunities associated with the narco-traffickers. For many young, poor people in Mexico, Schwarz says narcos, or the narco life, “represent a pathway out of the ghetto.”

“Take a kid in Juarez whose mother is working in a maquiladora and slaving away,” he says. “He sees that and then he sees the narcos buying big fancy cars. It’s easy to see why he might listen to the songs and why he might want to become a narco.”

And it’s not just kids in Mexico. There’s a scene in the film where a family is celebrating a birthday and the grandma is out dancing while the hired band sings about death and violence.

Here in the United States the genre gained some notoriety when Breaking Bad featured one about Heisenberg in an episode in season two. Across the country there are also hundreds of clubs that host narcocorridos bands or play narcocorrido music. Schwarz says most of the people who visit the clubs have normal jobs and lives but like the music because it gives them a sense of belonging as Latinos.

“Most of the kids who listen to the music go home at night and move on,” he says. “But it’s an important way for them to feel Mexican.”

For Schwarz it was important to show how connected the United States is to the drug war, both through money, politics and culture.

“I hope [viewers] see that the drug war is not some faraway issue that is foreign to them and only happens across the border,” he says.

During the film, Schwarz also follows Riccardo “Richi” Soto, a crime scene investigator in Juarez. It’s jarring to see Soto hauling dead bodies away in one scene and Quintero singing about violence in another, but that’s the point. For some people narcocorridos are innocuous, but for others the songs are a constant reminder of violence that has taken more than 60,000 lives to date. By following Soto, Schwarz takes the viewer into the lived reality that the songs celebrate.

It’s meant to put viewers “on the ground, in the belly of the beast,” he says.

Schwarz, who shot all the footage himself, embeds with Soto on several investigations and there is gruesome footage and tense moments where Soto explains the danger he’s constantly in. Several of his co-workers have been murdered for their involvement with the CSI unit and during the course of filming another is gunned down.

Overall, Schwarz says he hopes viewers get a sense for the complexity of the drug war. He wants viewers to know that not everyone who sings or enjoys narcocorridos necessarily supports the drug war, but is also honest about trying to bring viewers as close as he can to the daily violence and chaos.

“In terms of emotions, I want the audience to walk away with the same helplessness and broken feelings that I felt over the last four years while covering this story,” he says.